


Night Shift

by DrGaybelGideon



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Equal Parts Angst Snark And Sexual Tension, Hurt/Comfort, I'm rebooting the original!, Insomnia, M/M, Sass, Season 3 Chilton's fate doesn't happen, Will Is... Will., Yakimono AU, i guarantee it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-17
Updated: 2016-06-23
Packaged: 2018-03-07 14:03:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3175552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrGaybelGideon/pseuds/DrGaybelGideon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Abel draws the conclusion on his thirteenth day away from the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane that he rather misses the days when the only things he battled were insomnia, Chilton, other patients and his own head.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

‘Life’.

It’s odd to think that a simple string of four letters is probably the most heatedly debated word in the English language.  
  
Does it start at birth? A gasp of air, respiration, carbon and oxygen forcing amniotic fluid out of the lungs and triggering reactions? Kidney function, blood vessels opening, liver clotting blood, or is it earlier than that? A second of fusion, sperm and egg forming a zygote that drifts hopefully towards the uterine wall? Perhaps it’s only when it’s fused in place.  
Wars have been fought on the subject. Lives given. Probably lives formed as passionate arguments spiralled into touches and gropes.  
  
He’s tempted to ask the judge, interrupt the monotony of a 5PM courtroom hearing by speaking out of turn and hearing the opinion of the woman apparently qualified enough to decide his fate omnipotently.  
He doubts the attorney by his side could handle it if he did. Her hand’s already giving away signs of either nerve damage or a nervous twitch. She’s an alarmingly thin woman, suit slightly off on the shoulders and cheekbones hollow with either stress or coping with it and the twitches making her thumb dance jarringly all over the table could be muscular atrophy in a worst case scenario. He’ll tell her that after if she does her job properly, advise her to go home to a well cooked meal just in case his prediction’s right. She's been fairly silent this far, however, and unless she speaks up soon he might entertain the idea he's wrong.  
  
Life to him is a little different.  
He’s worked on both sides of it now, can accurately gauge the exact merits of each side of the moral fence.  
He’s using the word moral subjectively. A summation. He’s a psychopath, allegedly, although he’d rather like to see the credentials of the remaining two people who treated him before taking their diagnosis personally, and they don’t have morals. He doesn’t. Perhaps they’re right.  
  
Life to him is veins. Organs. The subtle threads of cartilage threading through every human body that can be sewn or cut at will, red pale grey tissue and where to place it or take it away. It’s black-red melted patches in the snow under his feet and the familiar feel of a scalpel between his thumb and forefinger and the steady backbeat of the dialysis machine working behind him mid-trasplant.  
  
Life to the judge who’s finished reading his case files and has got to her feet is the remainder of his years here behind bars and supervised.  
It's different from the last time, the sheer amount of amnytal prescribed to him is enough to rule out the death penalty on grounds of his mental evidence being tampered with and means it's a much smaller hearing. Either the FBI have pulled a few strings, kept it quiet and private so the press don't find out how a renowned psychiatrist put his brain through a blender or said press are no longer interested given there's no chance he'll fry. He can't tell which one bothers him more, and to be honest the fact he's committed more murders and received less interview offers is almost as disheartening as the fact a woman twice his age and with half his experience is going to decide which of the state's secure psychiatric cages he'll be expected to make a nest in.  
  
He knows.  
  
The only reason he bothered seeking a lawyer in the first place after being caught and shot literally red handed outside of Alana Bloom’s residence is because Clifton T. Perkins Hospital was better, was quiet and was new and was away from him, away from the bastard liar who did this to him and hell, the walls were blue.  
It's an idiotic detail, but it's preying on his mind now, sat cuffed to a table in a white walled building about to be sent back to a white padded cell-   
  
He knows.   
  
“That the defendant is suffering from a mental disease or defect due to which he poses a substantial threat to himself or others-” He’s going back. The judge is reading over the top of her glasses, probably reports of psychiatrists both dead and alive, all misleading or at las unpleasant. There’s barely enough muscle in his lawyer’s hands to stop them from tremoring, and somehow even less in her tongue, for the money he paid he’d love to put it on the outside now. “-He is hereby re-committed to Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane for the remainder of his ten life sentences.”  
  
Ten.  
Ten?  
The number’s far more jarring to him than her sentence, than the brief glimpse of short broad shoulders forcing themselves up stairs with the aid of a cane, than the visibly irritated glances from the guards he half remembers on either side as he's walked back to a van he can remember leaving in a very different condition. They really are efficient at getting blood out of upholdestry.  
_"How do you keep those whites so white?"_  
It's not recognisable as his own voice. Too hollow. At least he can remember his lips parting to say the words.  
  
He’d count his murders on his fingers if they weren’t cuffed behind him, which occurs to him as rather sick but nessescary, because he needs to keep track, now more than ever as his mind can currently be most positively described as moth-eaten and less positively as rivaling an amnesiac's.  
1\. His wife.  
2\. Her mother.  
3\. His father in law.  
4\. Brother in law. Younger.  
5\. The nurse.  
6 and 7. The prison van guards.  
8\. Carruthers.  
9- Chilton, no, because he didn’t kill Chilton and he wishes he had, but- ah. The driver from the van.  
  
The identity of the last victim takes a while, which whilst arguably both sick and alarming is nothing to do with the increase in pulse that starts seconds later.  
Number 10 is gone. He has no recollection of him, her- them?- or the incident at all. Even the first four are there in his cerebral banks, blood and gore and the strange, ridiculous urge to start eating his portion of turkey again to give the police hammering on his door a shock. He's got a legally binding excuse for not being able to remember those as those were crimes of passion, a big burgundy blur and then the bite of handcuffs.  
  
  
10's gone.  
No recollection of it at all, he admits after a minute, a murder he seemingly committed- must have committed, she was a fair judge, he’ll give her that, the evidence must have been there to prove it- triggering nothing but the mental equivalent of the crackle of television static in his mind.   
  
He assigns it to the 'missing items' list, the pile, notes down the space it should be in the void at the back of his mind that used to be fuller, used to exist.  
It wasn’t an old memory. Can’t have been. It didn’t fade like the older one, this one was cut out.  
  
She was his first, his wife was his first kill and Frederick was lying through the teeth he should have torn out of him.  
  
The van jolts, and it jolts him out of it, the jarred movement of his head forward clearing it and allowing his eyes to focus on the two sets of manacles on his wrists. _Better safe than sorry._ A voice that doesn’t sound completely his assures, and it’s true, he’d slaughter the entire van if it meant being returned to the other hospital.  
  
It’s easy to stare straight ahead and let his brain drift off, eyes staring aimlessly ahead at the white interior as the van's wheels drone wearily on the tarmac beneath his feet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so... I'm starting again. I'm sorry for leaving it for so long and I promise, it's getting finished this time but better!  
> If you're reading this you're probably here from the first time around, and thank you so much for supporting the first try, but it's happening again but improved.
> 
> Shift 2:0 starts here with a chapter a week and a definite ending, so strap in and thank you!


	2. Monday, 1:25AM

**Monday, 1:25AM**  
  
  
Abel's back, lying blankly staring at the ceiling in his own bed for the first time in three months.  
  
He's decided it's his bed. He hasn't been in his marital one for two years and he doubts he’ll ever see the relative luxury of the one he had upstairs again, but given that he’d have to be Frederick’s patient again to earn that privilege he’d be happy to lie on nails. They'd arguably be more comfortable than the hideously mean ratio of mattress to spring he's given tonight, he might as well be lying on the stone wall in terms of comfort. That's something he imagines the people upstairs are enjoying so defiantly he stretches, feigns relaxation at the beady eye on the far wall and lies back down.  
He really hasn’t missed the cameras, somehow even more uncomfortable than the cold frame his hand’s resting against, and the sharp contrast between clean white walls and the mausoleum stone he's surrounded by is probably quite indicative of what each hospital's designer was paid, let alone the respective value they place on patients.

  
  
He can't sleep.

 

Insomnia's plagued him for years. It would be more of a surprise if he could sleep in hell. He did once, but he was sleeping off drugs he barely understood then and that, he swears with a slight involuntary fist clench that if anyone ever tries to approach him with a needle again he’s dislocating every bone he can reach and kicking once they cuff his hands. He’ll deal with the headaches and whatever they throw at him because he’s not doing this again, he’s full of enough holes.  
Luckily (a loose sarcastic term, it'll be unlucky for his ears within days he knows) the man who shot him is on one side of his cell and Miggs is on the other, rendering him neither the most interesting or the most annoying inmate in cell block B. If he keeps his head down around the muttering guards and Frederick stays far away from him, he should manage to pull through for-  
  
However long he’s here? Until he can find a better lawyer and request a transfer?  
  
The only thing he prefers about here over solitary confinement is the distractions.  
Will Graham is vocal. Unsurprising. He certainly wasn't reserved the last time but at least he was awake then, the half hour long faint muttering is intensely annoying.  
Frederick’s put him here on purpose, he decides after another five, another petty revenge like the missing mouth of his toilet seat. Miggs is quiet today but they’ve shared before and he imagines his ex-cellmate's raving was at least half the reason he was so compliant with treatment last time, the noise was enough to drive him mad. Madder, which he doubts was ever the desired outcome of a psychiatric ward.  
  
The noise stops suddenly, and the silence is odder.  
The breathy little murmurs are gone suddenly, replaced by a little wet noise he shakes off the small drift of tiredness that's managed to settle on his brain to diagnose. It's familiar, too familiar, something’s caught in Will's throat, either he moronically leaned backwards with something in his mouth or he’s choking on his own tongue.  
The training's still there despite his conscious gaps: instantaneous. He’s on his feet in seconds, training forcing him to look around to see ways to access the patient, the idiot cellmate patient behind concrete and bars and of course there aren't, it's a bloody prison cell. Plan B, a guard and he’s been away too long, he doesn't even know the orderly's shift patterns any more, and he can’t just stand there silently because the alternative to a dead cellmate might be worse for him:  
‘Mr Graham!’  
Will cries out, retches loudly seconds later. Vomits. On the plus side it means his throat's unclogged, and on the downside the smell is cloying and of course, of course his first night back is perfumed by the smell of vomit.  
  
Well.  
Abel can't help but feel a little underwhelmed by the quality of his homecoming party, although it’s not the first time reunions have ended in screaming. If they put him in therapy with him again, it won’t be the last.  
He's muttering a mantra now, something small and annoying and if they do put him in a small room with visible blunt objects tomorrow he swears he'll need all the sleep he can get. ‘The gunshot you left in my shoulder will heal better with the beauty sleep you are currently denying me, do shut up at some point tonight.’  
‘You’re an insomniac?’ A confused but valid question.  
  
Graham read his files.  
The thought's a punch to an already angrily growling stomach.  
Fantastic.  
This entire ordeal has managed, despite the already astounding odds it was up against, to seem far worse than five minutes ago.  
  
‘Beardy?!'  
  
He jumps at that. Will does too, a small gasp from next door. Will's suprised, he himself is nauseous, hindsight preparing him for exactly what will happen next.  
'Beardy, what's happened to my arm?!'  
  
No.  
The screaming afterwards is so predictable he can time it, and although even the amnytal treatment couldn't force the memories from his mind, it's more piercing than he remembers it being, too loud after weeks of silence and hushed court cases.  
‘My name is Will Graham, it's two something AM and I'm in the-’ Will's voice is louder now, more strained, barely audible under the din erupting from the next cell, but coherent. Very coherent. He’s aware of who he is and where he is, and Abel couldn’t be more suddenly violently jealous if Will had removed Frederick's head from his shoulders instead of leaving Abel the right. ‘I'm in the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.’ A crunch then a dead silence as Miggs smashes his own skull unconscious acts as a forceful full stop to Will's monologue, which is good, the teethmarks holding his tongue's comments back seem useful now. He's still Will Graham, empathic scalpel who shot him despite his current- confusing- living arrangements.  
  
_What is he doing here?_  
  
  
‘How is being back in hell?’  
Will can't read minds. No-one can, he reminds himself, but the man's damn close.  
The man empathises totally despite their mutual dislike, and the thought strikes him: was putting Will down here instead of one of the more gilded cages Abel used to reside in pathetic psychiatric jealousy on Frederick's part or worse? The basement is a freezer, cold and dark and designed for volatile individuals that could go off in the sun. He wouldn’t put it past the man to lock the human embodiment of a raw nerve up with murderers and the mentally ill just to see what happens and scribble, analyse the screams and write the basis for a forth failed attempt at a psychiatric PHD?  
It’s likely. Will’s been buffeted from one bad psychiatrist to a worse one-  
  
No. He remembers the other one far too well in blood and incisions from living in his shadow for months. As his shadow for months. Hannibal Lecter is far worse.  
  
‘Still marginally better than my residence halls at Johns Hopkins.”  
Humour. It’s one weapon he’s certain is still firmly in his arsenal, and one he’s just as certain from the small huff of amusement through damp-dripped stone that Will appreciates.  
He still doesn’t like him, and that certainty smothers the strange urge to wish the man goodnight in his throat as he wriggles into a position about comfortable enough to get a few hours' sleep in.  
  
Two hours. Migg’s screams, the guard’s displeased call of his name and the pillow that he will check for rocks after breakfast all combine to form an intensely familiar pain in his neck.


End file.
